Alfred Henry Slocum was born on July 15, 1842, in Middlebury, Shiawassee County, Michigan, the son of New York natives John (b. 1821) and Lydia Bugbee (b. 1817).

John was living in Middlebury, Shiawassee County in 1840 and married Lydia Bugbee in Shiawassee County in 1841.By 1850 Alfred was attending school and living with his family and younger brother Addison in Thornapple, Barry County. By 1860 Alfred was still living with his family – his father was working as Justice of the Peace – in Thornapple.

Alfred stood 5’11” with blue eyes, brown hair and a light complexion and was a 19-year-old blacksmith probably living in Barry County when he enlisted in Company K on January 17, 1862, at Grand Rapids for 3 years, and was mustered the same day. He eventually joined the regiment in Virginia. In February of 1862 Alfred contracted dysentery while in winter quarters at Camp Michigan, Virginia. On March 21, 1862, he was admitted to the “Mansion House” General Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia, suffering from acute dysentery and general debility. He was discharged on June 20, 1862, at the general hospital in Alexandria, Virginia for “general debility resulting from an acute attack of scorbutus.”

Alfred returned to Barry County and resumed (or began) his trade of blacksmithing. (His father John was living in Irving, Barry County in 1870.)

By the fall of 1882 Alfred was a resident of the National Military Home (central branch) in Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio, when he applied for pension no. 462,571. According to the Home medical authorities, Alfred was suffering from an anal fistula. “Both buttocks,” it was reported in November, “are now . . . hardened and inflamed around the anus. There are four fistulous openings that are discharging very freely, and produce much pain for which he has been taking opiates. These have checked his diarrhea. . . . He is in a deplorable condition from his fistulae in anus. It has undermined his general health. He is feeble and emaciated and confined to bed most of the time.”

Alfred died on March 12, 1883, in Dayton, presumably of chronic dysentery. He was buried in the Home cemetery, section D, row 9, grave 11.